Focus 580; On the Seas of Glory: Heroic Men, Great Ships, and Epic Battles of the American Navy

We'll be talking with John Layman former secretary of the Navy. He served as Naval secretary and under the in the administration of Ronald Reagan in fact was the younger wrongest person ever to hold that post. We'll be talking this morning about a bit about the history of the Navy. And he's written about that in his book on seas of glory the subtitle heroic men great ships and epic battles of the American Navy published by the Free Press a book that he admits is perhaps a somewhat subjective and not entirely comprehensive history of the Navy but lot of good stories and hear about some of the personalities that made the Navy what it is and some of the important engagements that did the same. The book is out now in bookstores. If you're interested in reading it and of course as we talk this morning with our guest you're welcome to call the number here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We also have a toll free line good anywhere that you can hear us and that is 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 3 3 3 W I L L

that's what you get. You match the numbers and letters and toll free 800 1:58 W while those are the numbers questions are welcome at any point all we ask of people who call is that they just try to be brief in their comments but anyone is welcome to join the conversation. Mr. Lemon yellow Thanks for talking with us today. Well it's great to be here in the heartland where we seem to get most of our best sailers. Well I think what's interesting is that so far away from the major bodies of water you'd have a lot of important guys who were who significant in the history of the Navy allow that. That's because it's still true and it always been true join the Navy and see the world. And you're just a minute we'll talk about your family your connection with the Navy and your family didn't just start with you it goes back several generations. Yes we've been kind of stuck here in Philadelphia where my fourth great grandfather sort of started our naval tradition as a ship's surgeon on the privateer fair American and I've had a lot of

lot of my forebears ever since I've gone down to the great waters in naval ships. It's interesting you make some observations about the Navy and about how sailors feel about their their service branch and it's certainly the case I'm sure that that other people who have been through wars bond very strongly with their branch and maybe also with their if their pilots with their airplanes and maybe if they're you know guys who were in the tank or with their tanks but there's something that is different about the. Kind of connection that sailors have with their ships and it may be as you suggest it's because not only do they fight to they fight the ship it's their home they live there. That's right. It's a it's a unique relationship that we have through history and do today build these these things with the latest technology and then load them with sailors and send them off to

live in their weapons systems for sometimes years at a time. And and these ships last a very long time. The Constitution is still in commission 200 years after it was built and indeed three of those great super frigates which are of the greatest sailing warships ever designed by every world authority. Three of them lasted into the Civil War though they were built before eighteen hundred and do you know today we have the Iowa class battleships are 60 years old. Yet two of them are ready to go to war again. And two of them fought in Desert Storm and and and that that makes the the great warships part of history spanning many years. At the time. The Revolutionary War the United States didn't have a navy. It had to be established. How how did the sailors of that

day go about trying to essentially invent the American Navy. Well it's a very interesting history because the American colonies were really Marine colonies the industry was was almost all related to to the sea. Even the agriculture everything that was grown that was not eaten was grown for export primarily to back to England. And so all of the commerce all of the transportation if you wanted to go from Philadelphia to New York generally you went by by sea if you wanted to go from New York to Boston you went by sea so we had a very very well-developed marine industry at the time of the American Revolution but not a military. Dimension to that. The Royal Navy at the time was the largest navy in the world and we had many Americans serving as sailors but in the revolutionary Navy the continental Navy we had only one

professional naval officer and that was Nicholas Biddle. He had served with Lord Nelson when they were both midshipman. Again a great Philadelphia family but he was the only one. So we had to build a navy from scratch. But the main part of the of the military effort was really not done by the Navy tall it was done by privateers. There were some 600 ships. It fitted built outfitted and manned by non military people given letters of marque and reprisal by the Continental Congress to go out and capture British merchant ships and men to war where they could. And this had an enormous effect because in the research I did over in Lloyd's underwriters in London a found that they have the logs of three thousand British merchant ships captured by Americans in the Revolutionary War

period and twenty six hundred of those were captured not by the U.S. Navy but by privateers. And of course they were motivated by financial gain but also by patriotism. And this in effect eliminated 50. 9 percent of the entire world British Merchant Marine and bankrupted quite a few very influential people in London so when the war reached E.M. the disaster for the British at Yorktown it was the pressures of these London merchants and financiers on the King who was not ready to give up at the time even after Yorktown that made him finally give up because the financial pressures were too enormous so we owe a lot to the privateers the citizen sailors of the revolution. You know something I think you are right in the book you feel their role has not been acknowledged. I think perhaps not only just in the revolution but also afterwards.

That's right it's. And it's understandable because of course the United States Navy has it has kept meticulous records down at the Washington Navy Yard the archives of the U.S. Navy go all the way back to the Continental Navy in the revolution but nobody kept records for the privateers. They were all individuals. Outfitted by wealthy individuals and groups of individuals and. They were in it for profit and they when they did great things like the fair American which I write about captured 20 some major merchant British merchant ships made all their officers including my fourth great grandfather very rich but nobody kept records that you really I mean I had six people digging for a year to really put the story together. Whereas if you want to get the records of any of the great ships from the

Continental Navy they're right down there at Washington Navy Yard so it's understandable why why all the history books have been written about the official Navy rather than than the privateers but they have a fabulous set of stories to tell. Yeah I suppose I should know the answer this question. In the American Navy did they award prize money like they did in the British Navy. Yes they did right up through the Civil War in fact. The main reason that there weren't any private union privateers in the Civil War there were plenty of Confederate privateers but the union never issued letters of marque and reprisal in the Civil War because the American Navy had the United States Navy admirals wanted the prize money for themselves and many of them made quite a bit of money capturing blockade runners and. And ships carrying contraband in and out of the southern ports during the blockade so but right up until then. And it was

shortly after the civil war that Congress changed the laws to prevent naval officers from from sharing in the prize money of enemy captures but that that is why a great many naval officers became rich and all of our wars and that was sort of a that was not just the United States Navy but a practice throughout all of Major navies in the world. Just so people know or were talking about what would happen is if if in battle you took were victorious over another ship then you captured that ship you brought it home. If upon review it was considered you know there were ways of deciding whether or not it was appropriate but if if. Those were all found to be in place. And then your country essentially bought the ship. Then the proceeds were divided among the crew the captain. The highest ranking officer got the most and then it was divided up

according to a fixed formula in shares and the officers got a little bit less and then the seamen got even less but if you were part of the crew of a successful ship even if you were an able seaman this could be a significant amount of money if you did well in battle. Well typically a capture of East India men for instance by an American Navy vessel even down to the cabin boys would make more would make several years pay and just that one capture and even if it was capturing an enemy naval vessel for instance in the War of 1812 the American frigates were tremendously successful in capturing British frigate's and and smaller combatants and when as an example when the. Macedonia and was captured a brand new British frigate was captured by the

Stephen Decatur in the United States. It was taken back and it was sold to the United States Navy. It was condemned as a prize there were a whole international system of prize courts in every virtually every port. Even though he was being paid by and in United States ship and captured an enemy Navy ship when they brought it back it was sold as prizes and bought into the United States Navy and Stephen Decatur got the money. Not a bad system I was at it when I was six. Well although I think there probably is as yet yet another reason for friction. Say so we say between the army and the Navy the guys in the Army always at least in the British Army I think they were rather resentful of their naval brethren because there was no no equivalent sort of institution for. We have a special place on land you know in fact there was an equivalent although it never it didn't

usually provide quite as lucrative a return but for instance when Wellington was in the in the Peninsular campaign he he was able to keep quite a bit of legitimate booty if you will from from the conquests of the Napoleonic army at the time so the same thing applied but there just wasn't nearly the opportunity to capture the kind of loot that was available at sea and another thing that wasn't really quite comparable as you point out is that. Merchantman civilians were quite legitimate prizes whereas there was no not quite the same counterpart in inland warfare so it's a very interesting system it worked pretty well it motivated a lot of people. In fact it motivated throughout the revolution

they cut and a Congress was complaining that they could never manned fully and we never did manned fully the United States Navy because every available able bodied seaman would far rather go to sea in a in a privateer where his prospects of getting rich were far greater and where the danger of getting killed was far less because the privateers were designed to run from British warships. Unless they were smaller than themselves and not to fight and instead to concentrate on capturing British Marchment so that that created a bit of a complication for the Navy. Our guest this morning John Layman former secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration. His new book is on seas of glory it's a history of the American Navy. It's published by the Free Press. Questions are welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5. One of things that you write in. The introduction of the book is that you think that generally speaking naval personalities fall into three

general categories one being the those people who live for glory and for battle and not his. As we're talking here have been talking a bit about the American Revolution. Perhaps we should talk a little bit about John Paul Jones who pre-poll will remember for saying something to the effect of I have not yet begun to fight apparently he really did. Maybe not those words but he really did do that in a naval engagement with a British ship where his ship was heavily damaged and yet he wouldn't give up and eventually he he he was victorious. Well he's a perfect example of the The Great to heroic courageous figure who lives for battle. And in that battle where he was in a refitted merchant and the bomber shard. Sailing out of France against a British merchant traffic primarily he attacked a British convoy that was protected by a warship

to decorate it was twice the size of a bomber shard. The ser APIs and and should have been devastated by twice as much firepower and in fact the ship was but he he wanted while his ship was practically disabled and sinking was able to maneuver two to come alongside the serratus and to attack and fight and to board and capture the British ship even though it was twice the size. And he captured the captain of the ship and. And he was it and took him back to Holland with the captured ship and of course got the prize money for the ser APIs but wow he had his counterpart. The Captain Simpson in custody. The King George the Third Mate made Simpson a knight. And

so. There's a famous quote from Paul Jones. He went to Simpson before he was released and said well I look forward to doing battle with you again I promise to make you a lord. So it's a it's a great story this is what I try to do in an seas of glory is to make it make it accessible. The really exciting stories and personalities and battles of the Nabi to the to the average reader I mean we have a whole generation of kids and adults that have really been cheated of the great saga and the heroes of American history because it became very politically incorrect over the last 10 years or so to teach American history to the extent it used to be taught. So as a result. Most American kids have no idea of people like Jones and not just JONES But people like Biddle and

Decatur and and unknown people like Samuel Leach that I write about and the unsung heroes. These are great stories and so I tried not to as you rightly pointed out at the beginning of the show write a thorough comprehensive chronological history of the United States Navy there are plenty of those excellent ones in the library what I try to do is using a very meticulously researched backdrop of the chronological history of the Navy to concentrate instead on telling the stories. Up the people that made that history. Both the famous like John Paul Jones and the totally unknown like the Powder Monkey on on Macedonia inference a Caesar great story great human stories and great adventure stories. And again also tell the stories of the ships that that were evolved because one of the great stories of American initiative

is the United States Navy has really been at the forefront of introducing high technology from the very beginning the as I said earlier the Constitution was one of six frigates that represented an ingenious design of another fellow Philadelphian Joshua Humphreys who who built a frigate that was really faster and more heavily armed and really almost invulnerable to the counterpart firepower of the same size or same class of ship in the Royal Navy and as a result. They really kicked butt in the War of 1812 because of the superior technology. Yeah I think it's one point you observe in the book that perhaps now people think of World War 2 as the golden age of the American Navy. And yet before World War 2 the golden age of the American Navy was. The War of 1812.

Well that's right because after the revolution we had a period not entirely unlike the current period we had Muslim fundamentalists in the Barbary Coast which is the coast of North Africa where there were the Muslim pashas and they were seizing and enslaving American citizens and stealing the ships and. And they felt this was a proper jihad against the infidels and and so for 20 some years we had to send expeditions against them. That's where our Navy really developed its professionalism and developed its technology in these series of wars with the Barbary pirates because of course the Royal Navy which would no longer indeed not only would they not protect American

ships obviously after the American Revolution but they actually Kerridge the these Muslim fundamentalists to attack to attack American shipping. So finally we defeated one after another of them and that meant that we had a very experienced and battle hardened cadre of sailors and gunners and and captains like Stephen Decatur. So that when when the British in the Napoleonic wars started. You know declared they would not observe our neutrality and were impressing or stealing our merchant sailors and putting them into their war ships. And war was declared. We absolutely flabbergasted the Royal Navy and the British public by actually defeating the best of the Royal Navy in head to head battles in the first two frigate battles

of the war when the Constitution defeated the Gary arrow and then then. Decatur captured Macedonia and and then Constitution went on to it to destroy and sink the job which was a similar size ship. And half a dozen other British warships after that. This this put the United States mate Navy on the map worldwide suddenly everybody in the world took took notice because here was a very professional elite. Force much much smaller of course than the Royal Navy that that had what even the Royal Navy were recognizing were the best ships in the world and suddenly we were launched on to the world stage so it wasn't D-Day golden age of the United States Navy and it gave the United States a kind of

sense of global capability and a sense of self-confidence in the world that that as an an integral part of our American psyche. We're here at a mid point. We have some callers will get right to. Let me again introduce our guest We're speaking with John Layman. He served as secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration and is the author of a book that tells some of the history of the American Navy going back to the revolution. Continuing to the present. His book is titled seas of glory and it's published by the free press and questions are welcome 3 3 3 W I L L toll free 800 1:58 WLM. Let's start in here with a caller in Danville. That's line number four. Hello and good morning. Yes I am. I have a copy of the book just in title to your navy published in 1946 and evidently was written for

naval recruits. Is that still being printed by the Navy for their personnel. No I think you have a collector's item there are there are there are books that for recruits that give or give a. A summary of naval history and. And there is a standard text given to all sailors of course the Blue Jackets manual which does include customs and traditions and as well as a professional skills and and so forth but what you have is you should hold onto it will be valuable is valuable. I re read it many times I had two copies but I gave one and why. The other question I want to ask was. We had heard or read of the Great White Fleet that you know Roosevelt sent around the world. And somewhere I read that part.

Battleships were black in time of war and that sometimes the very act of starting to paint your ship would be a disastrous diplomatic maneuver and from that was combined the current battleship grey Is there any truth to that. Well there there there is some truth to it but the ships were painted white when they when they were serving as our Asiatic fleet was out in the tropics because it got so hot in those particularly that era of the first battleships and cruisers the first Iron fully iron and steel ships without air conditioning. They got in unbelievably hot. But if they painted room why did course they reflected the heat and were much cooler inside so that but that as you rightly point

out you don't want to be painted white when somebody is trying to shoot at you so. When there was an alert door there was an attack never to go into battle. Then generally a kind of camouflage of various other all different designs of ships were painted black sometimes or sometimes gray or sometimes a mixture but the battleship gray really evolved because at sea against the haze of the normal weather the Grey is the least able to be visually outlined so that that was the main reason but in World War Two they used a lot of different patterns of zigzag camouflage and so forth to break up the outline so enemy ships and particularly Kemah Kazi could not identify what kind of ships were there big or small

from a long way off. I imagine those white ships are unbelievably dirty when the cold. Well that's right but you need a lot of sailors on a warship of any any kind for a battle and when you're not battling you've got to keep busy so chipping and painting and repainting and washing and scrubbing is a very old naval tradition. Thanks so much. Thank you. Let's come back here locally. Two caller on line 1. Hello. Yes I would like to thank you with your use of the term Muslim fundamentalist. The pirates in Tripoli were pirates primarily and simply Muslim fundamentalism as we know it as a much lengthier Senate and I think we don't need language to fully.

We have enough of a problem finding terrorists without turning this into a war with Islam. Well I sympathize with your sentiments except I think I disagree with them because if you read the documents at the time the reason that the Barbary Pashas felt no compunction about enslaving and selling indeed American sailors into slavery and or killing them are torturing them or that they were infidels and they believed I don't know. Not being a theologian but whether it was erroneous or rightly but they believe the Koran taught that infidels could be enslaved and as you know during that period four times as many black Africans were sold to these Muslim fundamentalists because of what they felt was a religious blessing to do so then were shipped to the Americas. In my view in my reading of history they

were indeed Muslim fundamentalists and I felt piracy was a perfectly legitimate activity against unbelievers. You're quite right that they were Moslems. Even as the pirates and traits are largely Muslim today but they are not fundamentalists and neither. So what would you call them if they believe that they couldn't slave people is if that's not fundamentalism by a literal reading of the Qur'an what is our American soon brought slaves fundamentalists to. I think so yeah. I don't think so but they were slaveholders. Well they were they believed a basic simplistic view of Christianity that allowed them to think that that was moral that's fundamentalism. It's not extremism that is not the case what you've got in the one case is piracy pure and simple and that fundamentalists can be pirates and pirates can be fundamentalists and indeed they were.

Please let me finish. That area of North Africa been a pirate's nest at least since the timeless event when he withheld their hostage for several years. That's right by Muslim fundamentalist Moslems who happen to be pious. I think I'm going to jump in here because I think both the caller and Mr. Lemon have. Stated their cases and I don't think we're going to get the two of you guys to agree. Thank you David I agree with and forgive me for wanting to move on we do have few other people here and I will do that going on next to line number two which is another local calling. Hello. Yes David you really should have let that discussion go. Although it was one of my questions I'll just skip to a primitive question. I'd like a distinction made between piracy and privateer and the second question is exactly how many vessels do we have committed. Mr. Secretary to

the blockade of Cuba. What is their purpose and function I'll hang up and listen thank you. All right. The first question is the difference between piracy and privateering was that international law customary international law came very early to recognize the right of sovereigns to to commission private ships in their service to capture enemy under the rules of war capture enemy ships and and indeed there were no real navies in the sense we know them now when those when that customary international law evolved. The Spanish the British force that defeated the Spanish Armada for instance and indeed nearly all the ships in the Armada itself some three hundred of them were in effect privateers they were privately own ships in commission to the to their king and queen in the case of the UK. The idea of using private ships

for public purposes is deeply rooted in private law. But you need to have an official commission under international law. And these came to be either privateering commissions and this is sort of a final egoless to distinction or letters of marque and reprisal issued by the sovereign if you didn't have them and you captured a ship and you did not have such a letter a board or commission. Then you could be Summerlee executed and and hanged under international law as a pirate. So that's the difference between the two as to how many ships are blockading Cuba. I don't believe any of them are. Nor have there been since since the Cuban missile crisis the economic sanctions that are that are in force against Cuba are really in force. The US borders and US Customs rather than blockading the

Cuban coast. And I'm not a big fan of economic sanctions I think they rarely if ever work but they've been in place for a long time but they've not been enforced by the US Navy or the Coast Guard. All right Obama gets the questions the callers think. Sometimes I think. The distinction between a pirate and a privateer I think perhaps if you were say a merchant who'd had your ship taken by a privateer you would say there is no difference. Well no I think you might not even be able to say that if you are captured by a pirate because the pirates very frequently killed all the people well fair. Fair enough fair enough. To Chicago when Number three of the morning. I wonder if your guest is so familiar with the story of the Indianapolis. Yes very familiar roaming Metro. Yes that's it. It's one of the great tragedies of World War 2. As you know there are several good books including a recent bestseller on.

On the tragedy and this was the cruiser Indianapolis that carried the first atomic bomb to Sipe and for its preparation to be dropped on Japan and then when returning from that under radio silence was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and was not reported or discovered missing for days and days afterwards and the crew. We're in the water all the time and sharks ended up eating I guess about three quarters of them and a terrible ordeal and they were finally discovered by a p p y and. Then another destroyer came and was able to rescue them but that led to a court martial inquiry that

most people recognized today was a scapegoating of the captain who was unfairly victimized as being at fault when I was about to mention that there are even today and I understand out of eleven hundred ninety six men eight hundred eighty were killed. Yeah. How cruel. The survivors feel the captain McVeigh was wrongly reprimanded for that. They have intense loyalty for him and most of them said that if he were attempting it ship today they would go out with him again. Yes that's right it was a real miscarriage of justice. They even went so far as to bring from Japan the captain of the submarine the Tarpey do to him to try to get him to testify against Captain McVay. Well I understand that he said that. I think the captain could have done would have avoided what happened. That's right but he wasn't. That wasn't why he was brought. He did not do what the prosecutors had hoped he would do but the whole the idea of having

an enemy captain come and testify against an American captain was unprecedented and especially three months after the war was over. Right I mean it was really something else and then I move onto to our rehabilitative you know anything about that I think. I think generally it has been rehabilitated. I think that there's a general recognition certainly among naval historians and and I think the U.S. Navy itself that he was very wrongly. Wrongly scapegoated and I believe the record has been corrected but I'm not sure that because Graham Slater was the secretary of the Navy and Graham Plater I believe was his brother in law. Yeah I know you're short on time so I'll really the next question Do you know if there is a. And I understand that there is a move afoot to try and get dory Miller of the middle that he never got to know anything about that. I'm sorry I'm unfamiliar with that case and was a case of the African American a Pearl Harbor that apparently shot down some lions even though he was a

I'm a mess. Time blacks didn't serve in any aircraft units right. And apparently this man shot down a couple of airplanes and was recommended but never got his medal and was killed a couple years later. Well I am not familiar with the case but but if there was evidence that the medal was denied for for any racial discrimination with case or if they are to be reopened. Yeah there was a lot of that a lot of that happening back and now they've gone through the records since then and try to straighten a lot of that out I guess. Well it should be OK thank you. About 10 min. Left in his part of focus 580 our guest John Lamb and former secretary of the Navy. He is the author of a book that presents some of the history of the American Navy the people who made it and the battles that forged it. His book is titled On seas of glory. Heroic men great ships and epic battles of the American Navy it's published by the free press and certainly we have time for a few other callers and wants to pick up the telephone. Three three three W I L L toll free 800

1:58 WFLA. As as I mentioned earlier we're talking about John Paul Jones. You write that one of the categories that naval personalities fall into are these these men who live for glory and for battle. Another of these Stephen Decatur and I'm interested in hearing the story of what he did. Something that was that was said to be by no less than Horatio Nelson said to be the most daring act of the age. What was it that he did. Well during one of the wars against the Pasha of Tripoli one of the Barbary pirates called the frigate Philadelphia was blockading the port and unfortunately ran aground on a shoal right off Tripoli Harbor and as a result it was captured because it was it was unable to maneuver. Being stuck on the shoal and

so the Pasha took it into the trip Pollak Navy and there it was a very formidable even more formidable threat to his ability to grab American merchantmen So Stephen Decatur volunteered to take a lead teen raid. US schooner really are more of a cutter in with a force at night to destroy the Philadelphia because they didn't feel they'd be able to get it underway with the numbers of people that take forward so what he did was sail in and sail right up in the cover of night to Philadelphia boarded with his men and set fire to it overcome and killed most of the crew that were on deck set explosive charges and set it on fire and got away just as it as it

exploded so it was quite obvious where Stephen Decatur first made his fame and he Corsi he went on to many other great exploits and in the subsequent war of 1812. Maybe we did talk a bit here in the time remaining about the Civil War as people think about the Civil War and look at its history. Most of the emphasis is on the battles of place on the land. But there were there were naval engagements that were significant and during the war here perhaps we might talk a little bit about another person this that you put in a different category of those officers that perhaps were or were in your words equally courageous but more prudent perhaps we talk about David Farragut. Yes David Farragut is a unique unique figure and he does represent one of the three different types that I highlight in on seas of glory. He he actually fought in two wars he was in the War of 1812

in the famous Battle of our prize though as a as a ship's boy. And then 50 years later really led the American Navy. The union Navy and in the civil war and what he did was execute the strategy that Winfield Scott had recommended at the beginning of the war which was so-called Anaconda strategy which was to to take a force up the Mississippi from the south and down from the north to split the Confederacy in two so that they could Confederacy could would not have access particularly to the food in the beef from Western. States of the Confederacy and not be able to use the arteries of the Mississippi for for their maneuvering and logistics and then also to strangle them like an anaconda with with a blockade of all of

the ports in the Confederacy. And and it was really Farragut who. Who executed that very effectively. And the role of the Navy in not only in taking control of the Mississippi in the Battle of New Orleans and the battle of Vicksburg and so forth but but gradually strangled the Confederacy by by denying it realty to export its cotton and its other crops to get money and to bring in arms and ammunition to supply its army even though there were always blockade runners that were able to get in and out the cost of doing so and the volume was a trickle compared to what it otherwise would have been but the Navy also played another role and that was the Europeans. Particularly Britain very much favored the Confederacy

because they they would much rather have the United States split in two and be weakened and not not provide the kind of commercial world threat that they saw and also not because at the time both still had ambitions in the New World. So the United States Navy became was used very effectively by by Lincoln to threaten the Europeans both the French and the Brits with with in effect going to war against them because over that as the war went on particularly by 1864 the Navy had been able to build up to over 600 ships and was the biggest navy in the world and had the most the most ironclads had the latest dog and guns and and was a formidable threat

to British commerce and indeed to French commerce. So the Navy played a huge role and Farragut was its real hero I mean if you look at that picture in my book. Having the leadership of that guy just jumps right off. The paper the charisma the strength the presence of the guy because he lead by example he was a very brilliant man but he had a great common touch like like Nelson for his men and in the battle of Mobile Bay which closed off the last major Confederate port the he led he was up in the masthead while the shot and shell were bursting around him and for the most senior out admiral in the Navy that was. That was quite a quite an inspiring example to the sailors and to the whole navy and the world. It's a great story he's a great man and people Americans have to be reminded that

there are really great men in our past and in our president. That's what I try to do is not not to you know this is not some hagiography it's it's really an effort to show warts and all but even if you dig out the worst warts of most of the people I've got in this book they are magnificent people. That's why it is a wonderful portrait. Ferric at that photograph another one is another portrait that where the person just jumps out at you I think you'll agree. Is your eye a levy. Yes the first Jewish flag officer hero of the War of 1812 and a brilliant leader himself a handsome courageous leader and then when in between wars he got rich on Wall Street and then when Thomas Jefferson one of his heroes died he saved mana Chello from being destroyed.

He bought it and he restored it to its original shape and he he and his after him his nephew and then donated it to what is now the mount of cello foundations. So there are all sorts of fascinating people like that in our naval history that most people don't know about so I've tried to sort of excavate them and. And the third category we didn't talk about are the citizen sailors that the people who are not professional sailors and certainly not professional military people but when the war comes. They rally to the colors they go to see they learn the ropes as they say. They serve with great courage and when our wars and then when they're over they go back to their plows and their doctors offices and go back to their business. That is that is unique to the American Navy that is a tradition that no other Navy really has and you know the ratios like in World War 2 where 70 reservists citizen sailors to every regular Navy person so this is the kind of tradition that it is that

makes us such a great nation today and it's time more people knew about it. Well there we're going to have to stop because we've used the time want to thank you very much Mr. Lehmann for talking with us today. We appreciate it. Pleasure. Our guest John Lehman former secretary of the Navy the book if you'd like to read it is titled seas of glory published by the Free Press.